I imagine that people who are or have been homeless are somewhat baffled by the idea of a homelessness simulation, in which middle class individuals spend a night on the streets. I've never been homeless, and I still don't get it. The only purpose I can see is reassuring your ego that it's empathetic. Going unhoused is obviously terrifying — if you're lucky enough to have never been homeless, why subject yourself to even a one-night simulation of it?
Yet, people do. Every year, again and again. Last month, Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota, held its annual homeless simulation for students. One hundred and fifty teenagers paid $30 apiece, which went to a local shelter, to spend the night in duct-taped cardboard boxes on the school's lawn and for commemorative t-shirts. It sounds like tragedy tourism. Since 1992, however, the school has raised more than $40,000 for local shelters through the simulation, and I can't argue with money like that.
I do object a bit to every simulation's portrayal of homelessness as a cardboard box existence, when in reality those "chronic homeless" who live on the streets represent about 20 percent of all those who experience homelessness in a given year. But I get that stereotypes make the most impact. To have a real homeless experience, one shelter resident said of the students, they should be ridiculed and harassed.
Posted via web from Firesaw
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